I believe the reason why several artists leave Fiverr is because is not really good long term
- Fiverr has fees that reduces the amount of money artists receive, first from the transaction of the purchase, then to transfer the money to another wallet or bank account.
- Payments are frozen for a period of time before the artists actually get it, so in emergencies this may not be ideal if they need the money quickly
- Usually, a lot of artists on Fiverr are underpaid (But because they have to put low prices, otherwise they won't be commissioned)
First of all it'll be important to know if you already paid for those commissions, or if you paid half beforehand, and how long it has been since they last interacted with you.
If you use paypal, it'll be good if them do a proper invoice or for you to not pay through "Friends & Family" in case you want to have chances to get your money back (There is a time limit, so it'll be good to keep track of time to know if to contact paypal)
You can literally find artists be it in Facebook Groups (Focused on Commissions mostly), Twitter (You'll likely find artists through the hashtags #ArtShare
#CommissionsOpen
, Instagram it seems that you already know, but several artists actually started using Ko-Fi, so that's another good alternative and keeps things more organized too.
It'll be important to read the Status of the artist, their Terms of Use, availability, response time, their policy. But most importantly to know how genuine they are and how dedicate they are, you'll likely know this by checking how active they are regarding artwork that has been commissioned, check their posts and see how many of these are about comms and how much it took from one post to another. By how genuine their accounts are I meant by number of followers, number of pieces, if they also have another social media in other platforms, if these receive the same care, how complete their profiles are, if they use their own artwork as cover images or banners (Since, scammers/art thiefs have been pretty active lately)
There may be those that work on several commissions and later on post them all at the same time, but this is highly unlikely, most artists I know post a commission at a time.
I'm an artist myself and at least I communicate with my clients and several of them are already regulars, they know I have webcomics as a priority (I'm hired) and that some other clients are the type that get more than one thing done, so it can take up to two months to finish a piece between free time, but we communicate and at least show the few things I've advanced and they simply see whenever I update a chapter, show wips, post finished commissions from others. I also tend to stream my process sometimes on Twitch or Discord (I'm in a Server where most of my friends/clients are, so I'm also very transparent on what I'm doing)
Personally speaking, I had a few people coming to ask for my prices or if I had commissions open, and nothing else, then after a few months they come again and ask the same, I respond that yes I'm available. There'll be times when you'll find clients or people with inquiries who lack pro-activity and you'll have to be the one trying to dig as much as possible from them*. I don't do that anymore since that takes a lot of time, neither I'm the type that types a small sentece at a time, I rather message an entire speech.
Summary
*For example (This mostly happens to me on FB or Instagram):
Person: hello
Me: Hello! Feel free to write your inquiry ٩(◕‿◕。)۶
Person: are commissions open?
Me: Yup! X slots available
Person disappears for an entire month
Person: hello again
Me: Hi, hi!
Person: are commissions open now?
Me: Still open like last time (My ass noticing this is the secretive type, but I gotta, been doing comms for 8 years), would you like to see samples and the price list?
Person: yes
Me: (Info dumps/copypastes price list, ToS and required commitment in responses, descriptions and more)